If you are passionate by Nature and Science you will share my interest for past environments. They record the interactions between geodynamics, climate and biologic evolution through geological time. They enable to constrain the processes responsible for major environmental changes sensu latto. They provide analogues to foresee the destiny of our changing Earth.With a community of international scientists from trandisciplinary backgrounds we acquire and date paleoenvironmental records in the field, develop cross-calbrated paleoenvironmental proxies and integrate them into geodynamic, paleogeographic and climate models.My work has focused mainly on Asian tectonics and climate during the global greenhouse to icehouse transition since Cretaceous times. I have also developed several projects on paleoenvironment and hominid evolution mostly within the East African Rift.On this website you will find detailed descriptions of this research initiative including the team members, the various projects, publications and outreach activities, a set of scientific tools and more. Feel free to contact me if you have further questions or comments.

Scientific goals

What is the challenge of earth and environment sciences today? Since the revolution of the plate tectonic theory, the evolution of continental surfaces has been associated with the interactions of lithospheric plates. More recently, the digital modeling revolution has shaken the tectonic paradigm by showing the importance of interactions between external processes (eg. climate, alteration, biotic changes) and internal processes (eg. geodynamics, dynamic topography). On the one hand, climate models show that changes at regional scales (monsoons, aridification ...) as well as globally (cooling, pCO2 ...) can be attributed to phenomena of internal origin by means of variations in the distribution of reliefs, seas and continents. On the other hand, geomorphological models show that these internal processes can be influenced in return by the climatic variations through the erosion of the surface of the continents. Our goal today is to test and calibrate models using multi-dicsiplinary methodologies that allows to differentiate and quantify the respective contributions of internal and external processes to the paleoenvironmental variations observed during regional and global changes. To do so we particularly focus on providing key records of past environmental changes that enable to constrain external climate as well as internal tectonic variations.

Societal level

I believe that transdisciplinarity is the key for outstanding discoveries. The field of Earth sciences being transdisciplinary by nature is one of the most exciting. Today, this field is bringing science at the heart of the societal and economical debates defining our responsibility in preserving and sharing our planet's fragile environments and resources. My goals are therefore to better understand Earth processes by exploring the interfaces with other scientific fields and communicate the implications of these scientific discoveries to society. Hopefully this will contribute helping us live in harmony with Nature!